Fanny Blankers-Koen

Background

Fanny Blankers-Koen was born Francina Elsje Koen outside the village of Baarn near the Queen's castle of Soestdyk, the Netherlands, on April 26, 1918. She was the only girl in a family of five born to Arnoldus and Helena Koen. Her father was a government inspector in the Dutch city of Amsterdam in 1918.

Education

Fanny's talent in sports was evident from a very young age. She came from an athletic family that encouraged her to swim, skate, and play tennis. When she was six, she joined a local sports club, where she became known as an excellent runner and swimmer. When Blankers-Koen was 14, her father encouraged her to specialize in track and field. In 1935, when she was 17, she told everyone that she had made up her mind to go for sport. Blankers-Koen became a member of the Amsterdam Dames' Athletic Club and rode her bicycle 18 miles each way from her home in Hoofddorp to the gymnasium. She did not have an outdoor track to train on, so she ran indoors, in the gymnasium hallway.

Career

Blankers-Koen's first competition was in 1935, in a 200-meter race in Groningen. She did not place well at that meet, but within a month she beat the Dutch national champion in the 800-meters. At that meet, she met Jan Blankers, a talented track coach and former triple-jumper who had won an AAA scholarship in Britain. He was the track coach for the Dutch Olympic team and he invited her to join the team. Strangely, although she was so talented in the 800-meters, this race, like other longer distances, was considered "too difficult" for women and was barred from the Olympic competition.

Blankers-Koen made her Olympic debut at the age of 18 in Berlin, where she finished in a tie for sixth in the high jump and fifth in the 100-meter relay. For her, a highlight of the competition was meeting American athlete, Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals in Berlin.

After the birth of her son, Jan, Fanny continued to train, even through the oppressive Nazi occupation of Holland. Because of World War II, the Olympics were canceled in 1940 and 1944, and she was unable to enter international competitions. Nevertheless, she set world records in the high jump and the long jump at Dutch meets.

When Blankers-Koen gave birth to her daughter, in 1945, she had been out of training for a while. Nevertheless, seven months later she ran in the European championships, where she won the 80-meter hurdles, ran the anchor leg for the Dutch women's team's victory in the 4 (100-meter) relay, and came in fourth in the high jump. Just before the 1948 Olympics, she set a world record in the 100-meters, with a time of 11.5 seconds.

By the time the 1948 Olympic Games convened in London, Blankers-Koen was the world record holder in the 100-meter race, the hurdles, the high jump, and the long jump.

Like Babe Didrickson Zaharias, another famous female athlete, Blankers-Koen was skilled in more events than the official Olympic rules allowed an athlete to compete in, with world records in the 100-yard dash, the 80-meter hurdles, the long jump, the high jump, and two relay events. Official rules limited her to competing in three individual events, and she chose to run in the 100-meters, 200-meters, 80-meter hurdles, and to be a team member for the 4 (100-meter relay).

In all, Blankers-Koen competed 12 times in nine days - running heats to get into the final races, as well as the final races - and won every time. She won the 100 meters by three yards over Britain's Dorothy Manley on a wet track in 11.9 seconds.

The next day, she had a bad start in the 80-meter hurdles and caught up with the leader, 19-year-old Maureen Gardner of Great Britain, halfway through the race. Just as Blankers-Koen was about the take the lead, she hit a hurdle and staggered. The finish was so close that she didn't know whether or not she had won, and when the Olympic band began playing "God Save the King" she believed Gardner had won. But the band was only playing because King George VI had entered the stadium, and immediately afterward they played the Dutch national anthem to honor her gold medal win. She and Gardner had both run the race in the world record time of 11.2 seconds, but she had been declared the winner.

The tension of that race got to her, and just before she was scheduled to run the semifinal in the 200 meters, she was crying in the locker room, ready to drop out. She was exhausted and felt the pressure to win. She disliked the 200-meter race, an event that was being run by women for the first time in the Olympics, and she also missed her children. Blankers-Koen realized that all her life, all she had ever wanted to do was be the best. She decided to run.

Blankers-Koen won the semifinal in the Olympic record time of 24.3 seconds. Then, on another wet track, she won the final by 7 yards, in 24.4 seconds. She won her fourth gold medal in five days of running in the anchor leg of the 4 (100-meter relay for the Dutch team). When Blankers-Koen took the baton, her team was in third place, but she made up the huge deficit and caught Australia's Joyce King, who was in the lead, in the last two strides of the race.

Although Blankers-Koen was the world record holder in the high jump and long jump, she didn't compete in these events. If she had competed in the high jump and long jump, however, she would probably have won two more gold medals, since the winners in these events all won with distances that were far short of the world records - which had been set by Blankers-Koen.

After her Olympic victories, people compared her to African-American athlete, Jesse Owens, who had stunned the Nazis by winning gold medals in four track events in the 1936 Berlin Games. When she returned to Amsterdam, her country treated her to a huge parade. Blankers-Koen, who rode next to her husband in an open coach pulled by four white horses, was amazed by all the excitement, and kept saying, "All I did was win some foot races."

Running in the 1950 European championships, Blankers-Koen again won the 100-meters, 200-meters, and 80-meter hurdles, and won a second as a member of the Dutch relay team. When she was 34, Blankers-Koen wanted to compete in the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki. Although she started the 80-meter hurdles, she was not able to qualify for the finals. She withdrew from the Games because of a boil on her leg that led to blood poisoning and severe illness. In 1955, she officially retired from competition at the age of 37. She coached others and was the manager of the Dutch team at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City.

Achievements

• 

  Fanny Blankers-Koen was the greatest female track-and-field star of her generation. She was known as the "first queen of women's Olympics." Fanny gained prominence for winning four gold medals at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London.
  
  During her almost-twenty-year career in sports, Blankers-Koen set 20 world records in seven events ranging from sprints to hurdles, long jump, high jump, and the pentathlon. No woman in the history of track has ever won as many national medals. In 1948, she was chosen as the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year. In 1949, Fanny became Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau and Royal Dutch Athletics Federation honorary member. She also received a Medal of the NOC*NSP. In 1980, Blankers-Koen was inducted into the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame. In 1998, she was invited to New York to receive the Jesse Owens Award.
  
  Fanny was among the women included in the 1001 Vrouwen uit de Nederlandse geschiedenis, a dictionary of biography covering 1001 important Dutch women. She was also named Dutch Athlete of the Year three times.

Views

Blankers-Koen's Olympic victories are credited with helping to eliminate the belief that age and motherhood were barriers to success in women's sport.

Quotations: "One newspaperman wrote that I was too old to run, that I should stay at home and take care of my children. When I got to London, I pointed my finger at him and I said, 'I show you.'"

"I didn't expect I would [win a gold medal] because there were other very good [competitors]. I said I hope to come in the finals."

"All I've done is run fast. I don't see why people should make much fuss about that."

"All I did was win some foot races."

"When I competed, no one ever thought it would be possible to make money from doing something you enjoyed so much."

Membership

• honorary member

  Royal Dutch Athletics Federation , Netherlands

  1949

Personality

Blankers-Koen became known as the "Flying Dutch Housewife" because people considered it unusual that a married woman and mother was a world-class athlete.

Physical Characteristics: Fanny Blankers-Koen was 1.75 m (5 ft 9 in) tall and weighed 63 kg (139 lb). In the years prior to her death, she suffered from Alzheimer's disease and was also deaf.

Interests

• Sport & Clubs

  tennis, swimming, gymnastics, ice skating, fencing and running

Connections

On August 29, 1940, Fanny married Jan Blankers. He was fifteen years her senior. In 1942, Blankers-Koen gave birth to her first child, Jan Junior. She gave birth to a daughter, Fanneke, in 1945.

Father:

Arnoldus Koen

(February 25, 1892 - 1970)

Mother:

Helena Koen

(August 5, 1892 - 1962)

late spouse:

Jan Blankers

(April 23, 1904 - July 17, 1977)

Jan Blankers was a Dutch athlete and coach.

Son:

Jan Blankers Jr.

Daughter:

Fanneke Blankers

References

• Women Olympic Champions Women were not welcome to compete in the first modern Olympics. This tells the stories of women who were not only outstanding competitors but who also influenced the popularity and acceptance of female athletes.
  2001
• Een koningin met mannenbenen Blankers-Koen's biography by Kees Kooman.
  2003